


What You Wanted

by HedwigGirl



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Ba Sing Se, Comfort/Angst, Crystal Catacombs, Crystals, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, One Shot, Pre-Relationship, Room of Requirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 14:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20449004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HedwigGirl/pseuds/HedwigGirl
Summary: In which the Room of Requirement becomes a glittering crystal catacomb and Katara receives an unexpected visitor.





	What You Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Started writing this for fun and became way too obsessed with where a crossover like this could go, so let me know if you would be interested in seeing more from this little world !
> 
> ps I also made a playlist while writing: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1rk7YWwZ5sACmi7SyMskb1?si=jrrdHGJUQJ-MgzYI5umXlQ if you want more angsty, repressed, lost-in-the-catacombs energy

_I need somewhere where I can get space, _Katara thought, _just to think, I need to think, why isn’t there any place in this school to think?_Tensely coiled, she strode back and forth across the hallway. Her brain felt fuzzy, lost in the omnipresent scuttling of ghosts and portraits and people. (_Isn’t it crazy how alive Hogwarts is? _Aang, their first year. _Like this living, breathing creature we’re inside of._)

Katara stopped pacing, and turned to face the blank expanse of wall. The door to the Room of Requirement shimmered open in front of her like she knew it would, like it had for her ever since Year Three when Jet showed her his treehouse for the first time.

“Asshole,” she muttered, pausing at the door handle. She didn’t want to think about Jet.

Katara’s rooms turned out a little different every time she conjured them into existence, elements from the depths of her subconscious littered on the floor ominously. It was like wandering through the ridged groove of her own brain, feelings as visceral as neuronic pulses crackling through the air. Last month after she had failed her Charms quiz it had been full of things for her to destroy— ornate vases to smash, gold-gilded antique books from which she ripped pages out by the handful, lights that exploded with resigned pops and zaps of light when she shot spells at them.

Katara wanted to be a healer, to transform pained things into beautiful ones, but it was so easy to channel that same energy of creation into one of destruction. So easy to smash the bulbs of the potions she had spent hours perfecting the night before. It scared her sometimes, the ferocity and capacity for power that panted within her, that curled against her chest like a small, furry beast. Or an emerald-hued prefect’s badge.

She was mature. She was well-liked. If kept under control, this ferocity could be channeled into doing well at school and Quidditch. It simmered below her surface like impending storm clouds, like a tempestuous sea.

(_I love your energy, _Jet had told her at the end of last year, she remembered now, her head against his chest. _You’re like me. _She felt his blood coursing through his body, then, long and hollow. His heart beating in soft rabbit thumps.)

“Fuck that,” Katara muttered. And then she opened the door and stepped into the room she had created. Although, it turned out calling it a room felt almost silly. It was dim, and cavernous, and glittering, like a cathedral, but instead of stone or brick or any human things, it was made of what felt like cosmic glass, pale green crystal.

She had no idea where this came from. Her mind wasn’t usually filled with glittering things. It was cool to sit down, and the rock felt like it was buzzing slightly, under her feet, a quietly powerful thing.

It was like somewhere she had been a long time ago, a different lifetime even. A space between one place and another. A halfway point.

It felt like eternity that she sat there in silence, not thinking much of anything, just looking up. That made it even more jarring when the door opened, a shot in the viscous quiet. The door had never opened before. The door wasn’t supposed to open. Katara stood up, her wand drawn. The poisonous rippling of light across the walls of the cavern made everything seem uncertain. For a second she couldn’t quite make out the hazy figure at the threshold, until he took a step forward.

“Zuko?” This was supposed to be a place that reflected what you wanted, and she had wanted to be alone. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Zuko froze, mouth narrowed into a frown. “I could be asking you the same thing.”

He looked apologetic, she thought, but then it was hard to tell. Anyway, she was tired of that proud Gryffindor bluster, that silent moral ambiguity he had cloaked himself in like a mantle recently. Like something almost kind, only to fall in step behind Azula all over again moments later. Bastard. Rich mopey asshole snob. This was _her _brain. “Really,” Katara said, “You don’t get to ask me anything.”

He twitched, maybe at her words or maybe as if to leave. “I- no one has ever been in here before. I didn’t know anyone else knew about the place.”

Katara’s mind flashed to Sokka and his endless boasting about knowing the castle better than anyone, the maps spiraling in his head. He didn’t know about the room. She thought it might have something to do with the fact that Sokka didn’t need a place like this, interiority.

“Did you ask for this?” she said. Looking around the room with new eyes, as if probing for traces of him in its corners.

“No,” he said. “I’m not sure what this is. Look— I’ll go.”

But then even though they both groped around in the semidarkness, the door was gone. They sat down, silent. The ectoplasmic glow underneath them pulsated slightly.

“So,” Zuko said, after the silence had stretched on. “Are you into… rocks?”

“What?” Katara said blithely, snapped out of something. “What are you doing?”

“I was— because we’re in this cave—“

“Not that,” Katara said, “I meant talking. We don’t _talk.”_

_“_We’ve talked.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever said more than ten words to each other at a time in five years. Honestly it doesn’t matter— I don’t need to. I see your face and I’m instantly reminded of all the shit you’ve done to us.”

“To Aang,” Zuko said slowly.

“To me,” Katara said, baldly, stupidly. Her voice was rising in pitch again.”I mean you don’t even _know… _it’s people like you, like your dad… you don’t even know how all of that affects me personally… my mom…” She trailed off, angrily, her voice tight.

“I’m not my father,” he said bitterly, tired. “I’m not Azula.”

“Yeah. Well. You could have fooled me.”

“Maybe I have.”

“Yeah, maybe I just imagined all the times you’ve jinxed my friends in the corridors, that Toph’s overheard you spouting supremacist bullshit.”

“Katara,” he said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“You’re not a _hero,” _she seethed, “Just because the rest of your family can’t stand you either. It’s not just changing a hairstyle or making it onto the Quidditch team, or—”

“Katara—“

“You can’t just try on a new look, cover it all up somehow—”

“Well,” Zuko said, “I’m obviously not doing a very good job of that.”

Katara’s eyes flashed up at the raised redness of his scar, the rawness of it this close up. Something beyond healing. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

A pause. “Look… I’m sorry too. About your mom. I actually— lost mine also. I mean, that’s something we have in common.”

_“_I didn’t know—”

“Yeah.”

The longest pause yet. The vestiges of her anger felt hollow in the cavernous space.

“Okay,” Katara said. “Okay. So we’re stuck in here, and I thought I came in here to think but I don’t like any of the things that I’m thinking about. I just want to— not be here, or— be here in a different way, maybe.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

She took a deep breath. “Tell me a story.”

Zuko turned his head to look at her. Like he might be surprised too. “A story?”

“Sure.”

“Well,” he said, “I know this one… maybe you’ve heard of it. Warring peoples. Crystals lighting the way."

“Oh.”

“Not good?”

“That might be a little on the nose, don’t you think?”


End file.
